Re: NEWS for debian-boot

[Michael Schmitz <MSchmitz@lbl.gov>]

Chris Lawrence wrote:
> 
> On Jan 17, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> > In general, how are you supporting floppyless install (if at all) on
> > non-bootable platforms (like atari?).  I know that on Amiga and Atari,
> > generally they use OS-dependant loaders.
> 
> I suppose amigainstall.lha and atariinstall.lzh (and whatever the Mac
> stuff is) could be pre-unpacked on Disc 1.  This would allow a
> no-disk-except-CD-ROM install... I think.  I'll have to double-check
> the installation guides though.

The Mac stuff would need to be on a HFS CD 'partition' (or you'd have 
to invoke some trick to feed both data and resource fork to MacOS off
the ISO fs.). I've never seen any ISO CD on a Mac so I can't tell for 
sure. You can send me a CD with the install.sit unpacked on it if you 
manage to unpack it with macutils. Otherwise, I'll upload it to master 
in MacBinary format and the user will need to unpack it on the MacOS 
disk partition. 

> Things that need to be on the m68k CD that aren't elsewhere;
> preferably easy to find...
> 
> 0. Boot floppy packages.  VMElilo.  (It's in base, but you also need
>    it outside a .deb where it can be used.)
> 1. Debian install guides for m68k.
> 2. Linux/m68k FAQ.
> 3. Native-OS versions of gzip and tar?  [Are these needed to install?]
> 4. [...?] <- Am I missing anything?

rawwrite.ttp for dumping the floppy images on Atari (was in bo, maybe 
made it into hamm ??)

gzip would be nice to have; tar probably isn't required. I'm pretty sure
distributing StuffIt, BinHex and the like with the CD won't be allowed by
these tools' copyright. Mac users should already have them, or get them 
from Apple's support site. 

The things Mac users will need are 

- something to partition the disk, preferably HD SC Setup, patched as 
  described in one of the references in the install guide if necessary.
  (I've never got any feedback from people that tried to install using
  other disk tools; some partition formats weren't recognized by dinstall
  but no one ever sent a mac-fdisk -l output)

- StuffIt or StuffIt Expander (should cover BinHex and MacBinary conversion
  as well). Or DiskCopy 4.2 or newer for creating a 'boot' floppy.

Covered in the install guide but we should probably add it to the 'official'
docs as well.

	Michael